The present invention relates to splashguards for application to the wheel arches of motor vehicles such as automobiles, utility vehicles, and trucks. In particular, the present invention relates to an "after-market" splashguard that is contoured rather than flat and can be applied to a wide variety of vehicles having vastly different wheel arch shapes.
Splashguards have long been used on motor vehicles to control or contain the water, snow, and dirt that is thrown off a vehicle's tires while travelling on the road during inclement weather. Typically, the splashguard is attached to the wheel arch of the vehicle immediately rearward of the tire. The splashguard is intended to prevent, or at least minimize, water, snow, and dirt from being thrown by the tire onto the body of the vehicle.
Manufacturers of motor vehicles increasingly are offering custom-fit splashguards for their vehicles as an original-equipment option. These splashguards often are contoured in appearance, that is, they have a concave forward-facing surface that serves to contain and control the dispersal of water thrown off the adjacent tire. The rearward-facing surface of these original-equipment contoured splashguards often is complementary-shaped, which presents a pleasing appearance.
Many vehicles are sold without original-equipment splashguards, however, and a large demand exists for vehicle splashguards in the "after market." For many years, after-market splashguards were sold primarily for their functional aspects, and they generally took the form of a piece of planar rubber-like material that attached directly to the wheel arch. The flexibility of the flat splashguard enabled a single product to have virtually universal application, as it could be easily deflected to conform to the longitudinal curvature of any particular wheel arch. An example of a simple, flat, conventional after-market splashguard is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,264,083, particularly the plain splashguard depicted in FIG. 14 thereof.
As original-equipment contoured splashguards became more popular, there was an increased demand for an after-market product with the structural appearance and functional advantages of a contoured splashguard. One attempt to address this demand is the CONTURA.TM. splashguard sold by Highland Industries L.P., the assignee of this application. The CONTURA.TM. splashguard has two separate flanges joined together along a common edge, a first forward flange for attachment to the longitudinally curved wheel arch and a second flange that angles rearwardly from the forward flange and is intended to flexibly conform to the laterally curved surface of the outer vehicle body panel adjacent the wheel arch. The outer surface of this rearward flange extends into the rearward surface of the splashguard.
The disadvantage of an after-market splashguard such as the CONTURA.TM. is that the manufacturer must tool for, produce, and keep an inventory of a plurality of models to satisfy the market. Motor vehicles display a wide variance in the lateral curvature of their body panels adjacent their wheel arches. Indeed, although most vehicles have a laterally convex surface adjacent the wheel arches, vehicles with so-called "ground effects" rocker panels are laterally concave. It thus is impossible to provide a single model of a contoured splashguard with a rearward flange that will conform to the body panels on all vehicles.
The present invention is intended to solve this problem by providing a universal-application contoured splashguard.
Additional features and advantages of the present invention will be set forth in part in the description that follows, and in part will be obvious from that description or can be learned by practice of the invention. The advantages of the invention can be realized and obtained by the apparatus particularly pointed out in the appended claims.